


the magnifying glass

by sagemb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, can you be the black sheep if you're an only child? inquiring minds would like to know, tony stark's brief dalliance with institutions of higher education, using CACW canon for an AoU coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-22 02:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb
Summary: When Tony was nineteen, he decided to go to L'Ecole Polytechnique to get his doctorate.





	the magnifying glass

When Tony was nineteen, he decided to go to L'Ecole Polytechnique to get his doctorate. On the whole, it was not a terribly informed decision. What little French he had had been halfheartedly hammered into him by childhood tutors; enough to order an aperitif in the 16th arrondissement, not enough to flirt and not get that same aperitif emptied over his head. (He learned this from experience his first month in.)

He might have gone mostly to piss Howard off. Howard hated Paris with the fervor of a lifelong New Yorker; he'd always said that the one good thing about France was that it had been Allied in the war.

Two years into Tony's doctoral program, his parents were killed in a car accident. He was home for Christmas when it happened. He was the only one in the family to be home. By then he was already ABD. He suspected that this was because the school wanted to be rid of him as soon as possible, only he was too brilliant and too rich for them to kick out.

The funeral was in Washington. So Howard made it to his destination after all, Tony thought snidely. Maria hadn't. Her suitcase was packed full of things for the Bahamas. Someone, not Tony, had arranged for it to be brought back to the house.

He got a nosebleed three-quarters through the eulogy. He was the one giving the eulogy. It was the most interesting thing to happen at that funeral, at least according to the New York Times, which featured a photograph of Tony on the front page the very next morning with blood all over his lips, his chin, his hands, and only mentioned in the last paragraph of the accompanying article that the President and Secretary of Defense had stopped by to pay their respects, as if as an afterthought.

Perhaps the press considered the nosebleed a better show of grief than crying.

Anyway, after all that, Obadiah showed up at the house with a ream of papers and a couple of lawyers.

"It's time," he told Tony, grinning sunnily. "You're finally going to have control of the empire, Tony."

Tony signed, and withdrew from the doctoral program the following week. He sent his longsuffering advisor a very fine bottle of wine. Someone else, not him, made arrangements to sell his house in Palaiseau and ship his fuel-efficient little car back to the States. No need for a PhD when you were already a billionaire, obviously.

Ten, twenty, twenty-five years later, Tony was fast accelerating toward the age Howard had been when Tony was born. He often felt like he was counting down the years to when he'd transform into his father: a bomb with a fuse that was at the same time very long and horrifically short. Some days he was almost viscerally glad he didn't have many people, much less a kid, to inflict that on. He had made the decision to retire from active duty even before the smoke had cleared in Sokovia. He was tired of inflicting.

"Tony, I don't think that's what we need," Rogers was saying. They were on one of their many supervisory visits up to the construction site of the new Avengers facility. Tony could never decide if he liked talking to Rogers or not. It generally made him feel like he was talking to his father's younger, more glamorous brother.

"Need? No, but think about how much less manpower you'd need for perimeter security. And cybersecurity, that's completely taken care of with this. Just one measly little AI wired into the walls, boom, no more worries."

"Technology is a tool," Rogers told him. "Not a solution."

"Stop that," said Tony, scowling. "Stop making it so big. I'm trying to help here, damn you."

"I know." Rogers smiled thinly at him. His hand was held up to shield his eyes from the glare; the sun was unusually bright for early morning. Tony had forgotten his sunglasses in the car. "Thank you, Tony. But it won't be necessary."

"You guys'll go to shit without me," Tony said. "You'll beg me to come back soon enough. And guess what? I'll say no, because I wanna live my own damn life, and then the enemies'll be at the gates and I'll fucking show up like the prodigal son and save the world again and they'll write songs and erect statues of Iron Man in my honor, oh, Jesus Christ, it'll be disgusting but so, so good."

Rogers stared at the piles of dirt and the bones of an aircraft hangar slowly filling itself in, pointedly ignoring him. "What do you think you'll do when this is finished?"

"No rest for the multibillionaire," Tony said, shrugging. There were dozens of things he could have said. He could take up a more active role with SI. He could rebuild the Malibu mansion. He could start another charity. He could propose to Pepper, plan a wedding. (Hire someone to plan a wedding.) They'd been together an appropriate length of time to get married, right? "You know, I've been thinking. You know what the world definitely isn't ready for?"

"What?" asked Rogers, looking apprehensive. Tony couldn't blame him.

"A Dr. Tony Stark," said Tony, just to see if he could make Rogers blanch. Only he didn't— he grinned almost deviously and said, "That sounds like a swell idea."

"Yeah, it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it," Tony replied, and there they were: squinting at each other in the cutting sunlight, in on the same joke.

**Author's Note:**

> My [Tumblr.](http://callsignnomad.tumblr.com/)


End file.
